إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَاللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ
"Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is)the most righteous of you" AL-QUR'AN 49:13

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

A DISCOURSE IN ISLAMIC STATE (Part 16)

Assalamualaikum,

..............continued from part 15

CHAPTER 3 : ISLAM AND POLITICS

On Politics

Politics is the making of decisions by public means (Deutsch, 1980), either by elections, referenda, laws, court judgements, administrative regulations and decisions and the likes. It is politics that determines the destiny of people, simply because it affects every single aspect of human life. Recall the duniawi-ukhrawi paradox in Chapter 1, where a Muslim in what Al Naquib Al Attas called microcosmic scale, has fifty ringgits in his pocket. His decision to spend the money is always guided by the injuctions laid down by Allah as revealed in the halal and haram commands. The man is free to take his own choice in spending the money as long as it is halal, and he must refrain from engaging on the selection of choices which are haram. In this case, the man has at his own disposal to decide whether to engage on the halal or haram choice. So he has to make a decision.

When decisions have to be made at the macrocosmic level, a level which involves not only the man, but other members of the society, politics and political processes are concomittant, and again basic foundations had already been decided by Allah, with rooms to be filled in according the temporal and spatial needs. It means very simply the Muslim's deeds are always guided by Allah or Islam, be them social, economic, political and the likes. Thus, politics is inherent in Islam.

Because politics is the making of decisions by public means, it is primarily concerned with government (Deutsch, op. cit.).Islam requires that the steering, self-steering, information and control of the people must be done according to its precepts. Abdul Qadir Al Mandili (1961 = 1381H) contends that man is the inheritor of Allah's Mulk, (government), and thus the task of governing has to be undertaken under His auspices. In his correspondence (op.cit.) with Syed Alwi Maliki, regarding the seperation of state and religion, Syed Alwi Maliki quoted As-Syeikh Mustafa Sobri, the late Sheikh ul Islam of Turkey from his book Mau Qifi Al'Aqli wa Al Ilmi wa Al 'Aalami, that it is haram.